Theoretical Works
Where does the modern science of psychological flexibility intersect with, and lend scientific weight to, existential philosophy? What do they offer us in creating meaning as human beings?
Outstanding article award winner
Despite evolving separately, CBT and existential-phenomenological therapy share fundamental assumptions about existence — that life is riddled with uncertainty, that we are free to choose, and are responsible for our own existence. I contend that an underlying objective uniting cognitive-behavioural and existential traditions is to open clients up to contingent truths and the abundant possibilities of the future. Where some practitioners may impose a rational framework on the client under the assumption of an objective, universal truth, ACT shares existentialism's contextualist philosophy, which places each thought, behaviour, and sensation in the whole context of the person.
In both ACT and EPT, the focus is not on the countless displays of human suffering but on the processes controlling the whole show. Examining the philosophical assumptions underlying their practice allows practitioners to take ownership of them and operate with clarity — and this is the foundation on which I am building my own practice.
This article explores the clinical relevance of Paul Tillich's existential theology to existential psychotherapy, particularly with clients from cross-culturally and spiritually complex backgrounds. As an atheist, I engage Tillich not in spite of, but because of, his theologically grounded existentialism — a framework that transcends rigid binaries between faith and secularity, individualism and collectivism, West and East.
Focusing on three of Tillich's central ideas — participation and individuation, three ontological anxieties, and the God above God — this article traces the existential impact of belief systems on moral guilt, meaninglessness, and cultural alienation, grounded in a clinical case study of a Muslim client navigating exile, homosexuality, and spiritual shame. Tillich's theology offers a compassionate, inclusive bridge between philosophical abstraction and embodied experience — and invites existential practitioners to resist ideological imposition and return to existential therapy's core: meeting clients in the full complexity of their being.
